Do lawyers still advertise in the Yellow Pages in the age of Web 2.0?

That's the question being asked on the Lawyerist Blog.

The Yellow Pages has never seemed like a particularly good investment—for me, at least.

A colleague in a similar line of business–and therefore a good test case for the kind of clients I am after—does use the Yellow Pages, and reports getting only a couple of leads per month. In fact, I have not heard any Yellow Pages success stories in a very long time, except from the occasional criminal defense or personal injury lawyer with a full-page spread.

The blogger has asked readers to comment and some of the observations are quite interesting.  Here's a sampling:

1.  "While the struggles of some [Yellow Pages] have been well documented, I think to broad stroke the entire industry as dead is a mistake. . . . .  The value prop is that there are millions and millions of people searching for products and services through various different methods.  [The Yellow Pages] needs to have a complimentary set of offerings that give your customer the most targeted exposure at an affordable investment. . . .   There’s a ton of value in [Yellow Page] and I expect as the good ones re-invent themselves, they will continue to be major players for a long time."

2.  "I showed my teenage kids the yellow pages, and they looked at it like, what is that for, and why would anyone use it? If it’s not online, they are not interested. That’s the future. They have also never used a card catalog, and they don’t have much experience with dictionaries or encyclopedias either."

3.  "Last year I spent AUS $60,000 on a full page spread in my city’s Yellow Pages (Perth, Western Australia) – including advertisement under Solicitors, Barristers & Debt Collection Agents. We also advertised in Country WA Yellow Pages – all regions.

I cannot think of a single client that was brought in by this. No doubt we got some phone calls, but the conversion rate was very low. I tend to think that if people go to YP – then they are shopping around, and if that happens you have to come from behind to win the client.

All of our success stories, came from other sources of work.

I think clients are more computer savvy these days – and the YP is overpriced & obsolete. Furthermore, online marketing levels the playing field. While Google and Facebook certainly have market share now – the market quickly changes as soon as these search engines/social networking sites become ‘old hat’ and the next ‘cool’ thing comes along."

You can read the rest of the article and reader comments here.

(jbl)